


On Switch

by Creed Cascade (creedcascade)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Established Relationship, Geek John Sheppard, Geek Love, Humor, M/M, Math Kink, Mathematics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-10
Updated: 2011-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:46:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creedcascade/pseuds/Creed%20Cascade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during first season, prior to “The Brotherhood”. Rodney doesn’t realize everything there is to know about John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Switch

There are moments in life that make you believe in fate. Rodney McKay didn’t believe in those moments. He believed in the power of the mind, the power and strength of his own mind.

People called him arrogant. He called them idiots and mostly to their faces. He called them other things in his head, but he didn’t think they would understand his best and most complex insults.

Rodney barely tolerated people when he was involved something that called to him. They were mere distractions from those more interesting pursuits. Pursuits that kept his constantly buzzing mind occupied. And the idiots deserved every unkind word that came their way for taking him away from his true love… science. If they couldn’t handle it, it wasn’t his fault.

Someone might say it was lonely not having an intellectual equal around. But only weak people were lonely as far as Rodney was concerned. And if there wasn’t someone out there who was his intellectual equal, then there was someone who was close. It was when they were superior in other ways that made Rodney a bumbling idiot.

Women. Namely, blonde women.

It was such a cruel irony that he was attracted to genius, naturally blonde women. It was almost an oxymoron.

Rodney liked to think that it was a breeding imperative that told him to seek out this perfection to create superior offspring. The only problem with that theory was that he also suspected that the women were also looking for a supreme specimen and it wasn’t an advanced brain that turned them on.

Rodney had learned that from Samantha Carter. She had a strange attraction to that Neanderthal O’Neill. Rodney resigned himself, for now, to getting off on Ancient technology to pass the time.

Besides, he had a perfectly congenial arrangement with John Sheppard since they fucked on a regular basis. It was something relatively new and it was perfectly satisfactory when you considered that Sheppard also saved his life on a regular basis. Rodney never had the patience to tolerate a real relationship. For now he was perfectly happy with a friendship with benefits.

Rodney liked to think that it was the ATA gene that gave John a tolerance for Rodney’s eccentricities. And Sheppard was easy enough to tolerate. They saved the world together, watched movies, and The Game.

And then there were Sheppard’s eyes, the way he squinted them. And his breath caught when Rodney fucked, which was definitely a check mark in his favor. He was easy on the eyes, had insane amounts of stamina in bed, and was capable of holding a passable conversation. John didn’t cry if Rodney didn’t have time to spend with him. He didn’t pout when Rodney was working on an important project; though he did pout just a little when Rodney insisted most of the new Ancient technology weren’t weapons.

And being with John on a regular basis made Rodney far more tolerable for the other people on Atlantis. Rodney lashed out at John far worse than anyone else, but John would either just ignore him or snap back with his own sarcastic remarks.

If John were a woman, he might have been the perfect mate. If he were blonde.

Rodney didn’t think of it as biding time with Sheppard. It wasn’t settling because Rodney McKay didn’t settle for anything. In the here and now, being with John was the best. It just wasn’t love.

+++++++

John was cleaning his gun on the table while Rodney had files spread out and glared at his laptop. Tonight they were in Rodney’s room after a long day.

Rodney was swearing continuously at the screen and this particular rant ended with, “Flaming incompetence! I wonder how effective anti-moron software would be? Fuck, not even flaming incompetence. They’ve reached new levels. Spastic incompetence.”

John didn’t look up from his task to comment. “You already said that.”

“What?”

“You’re repeating yourself, Rodney. You went off on an almost identical tirade about an hour ago.”

A good insult was a point of pride. “Yeah, so? It doesn’t make it any less true.”

“No, it doesn’t. It just means you’re getting tired.”

“It does not.”

“It does.” John rolled his eyes. “You’re passed exhausted when you start repeating insults.”

Rodney glared at John and wondered how he could modify the man’s weapon in non-lethal, yet hilarious ways to exact his revenge. “Just when I think you’ve reached and encapsulated the limits of idiocy, you open your mouth again.”

John looked a little more satisfied at the original insult, but he didn’t look the slightest bit insulted. Instead he smiled and nodded. “That’s better.”

They went back to their separate activities, falling into a companionable silence. Rodney’s eyes started to hurt and he rubbed them with the base of his palms. He blinked rapidly a few times and watched the numbers and words on the screen go out of focus. John had been bugging him for a while that he might need glasses. Of course, John had perfect vision.

John smiled as he closed one eye and looked down the barrel of the hand gun. "There's something wrong with that equation."

Rodney didn't look up from his laptop. One of the only reasons he tolerated Sheppard's presence when he was working was simply because the man had the common sense to leave him alone most of the time. John was content to review his own paperwork, play with his weapons, or even watch a movie he had seen dozens of times. He usually seemed content enough to simply be around Rodney. Rodney still hadn't figured that out yet.

Usually Rodney was the one grumbling at the ineptitude of his staff or cursing loudly at his computer. Sheppard usually just smiled like he was humouring Rodney. Sometimes he made a comment back, which Rodney usually ignored.

The only reason John's comment had half-registered with Rodney was the use of scientific terminology. "What equation?"

John used the barrel of the handgun to tap an open file that Rodney had spread out on the table. "This one."

Rodney felt this sudden urge to shut Sheppard up for snooping around his work. He looked up from the screen and squinted down at the file. "That's a reworking of the time dilation factor and light cones."

"Whatever..." John shrugged his shoulders and was concentrating on the loading mechanism of his handgun. "I'm just saying it's off."

Rodney leaned over the table, knocking a few other papers and files off to get to the one in question. "I'm telling you..." His eyes quickly scanned the page, rapidly taking in the graphs and calculations. Then he saw the error; big and ugly staring up at him. "Huh. It is wrong." Rodney zeroed in on John. Rodney poked John's shoulder with the edge of the file. "This is advanced temporal physics."

John looked up from his dismantled weapon and sighed, "So?"

"You can't just..." Rodney didn't finished speaking. Instead his eyes narrowed into a glare. "The Czech put you up to this, didn't he?"

John popped the clip back into the handgun and carefully set it on the table. "What?"

"That bastard. He's just jealous because I told him he didn't have two brain cells to rub together. He's dumber than the gardeners."

John winced at the mention of the botanists. "No, listen, I was just skimming the report..."

"You?" Rodney repeated back in disbelief. "You do not skim advanced temporal reports. You..." Rodney waved his hand at the gun in John's grasp. "Fondle weapons. You hit things. You run around playing soldier. You..."

"Save your ass on a regular basis?"

"That's your job." Rodney nodded and motioned wildly at John. "Which just goes to prove my point. You do not review my scientific files." Rodney smacked his hand down on the file. "You’re trying to tell me you skimmed it for fun? And you... you, Major Sheppard, I don’t care how capable you are, sure as hell aren't able to tell what's wrong with a complex calculation like this just by skimming it. So, tell me how you did it so I can get back to some real work."

Rodney had that look on his face that meant he was going to obsess over something until he was proven right. John grabbed the file off the table, skimming the numbers, graphs, and footnotes. He found what he was looking for and pointed it out. "There."

Rodney made a huffing noise. He grabbed the file out of John's hand and slammed it down on the table. Reaching down onto the floor, he picked up another previously discarded file detailing a project proposal he had already determined to be crap. There were disgusting flaws in the discussion on tesseracts, but only someone qualified, like himself, would be able to spot them. It would just be a bunch of babble to someone like John.

"Tell me if there's anything wrong with this... and where."

Rodney gave John the file with a smug look on his face. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, watching as John's eyes started to flicker over the page. He fully expected him to go over it for half an hour or more, then give up. The time wasn't wasted from Rodney's point of view because he was proving a point.

John's brows wrinkled a little as he considered the page. Two minutes and forty-seven seconds later, Rodney knew exactly because he had counted, John pointed at the section of the proposal discussing the convex hull. It was the section that had nearly made Rodney spit out his coffee in disgust. John had found the mistake. But not only had he found the mistake quickly, he was pointing to the exact line, that if followed through, would implode not only Atlantis, but the entire Pegasus galaxy.

All his Ph.D. inspired eloquence was gone. "How did you...?"

John just shrugged and set down the file. "It’s not that hard.”

Rodney was barely listening. He was already scrambling to his feet and grabbed another file off the floor. Rodney stalked over to John and smacked this file against his chest. This file was one he worked on during his coffee breaks for fun chipping away at a so-called futile exercise.

"And this... tell me what's wrong with this."

John just sighed and pried the file from Rodney's hand. He started to skim it, and Rodney knew he was skimming because John used his damn finger like a grade two student to track his progress. But John wasn’t a grade two student.; he was a man Rodney tended to underestimate.

John was scowling at the page. It was the same scowl he gave a weapon that didn't work. "It’s wrong. Fatally wrong."

Rodney moved in closer, leaning over John's shoulder and challenging him, "But why?"

"I told you, McKay, it’s wrong. What is this anyways? Turbulence Theory? Because even a first year undergraduate would know it’s intrinsically nonlinear. It’s wrong because it’s virtually unsolvable."

Something clicked into place for Rodney. He had never thought of John as his intellectual equal; only a few select individuals had ever been granted that honour. Somehow, the below-average person managed to score enough intelligence to breathe, walk, and talk. He had thought of John as above average and smart, but not an equal. When their relationship started, Rodney accepted he was out John’s league when it came to intelligence, but he sort of evened out in the long when you figured in John was gifted in the too-damn-pretty and armed-maniac department.

But John wasn't an ordinary soldier; he was an extraordinary pilot. Now that Rodney had honed in on it, there wasn't much ordinary about John. He was a commanding officer with authority issues. He was a loner in a societal structure that demanded team work to function. He was one of the lucky few humans who had the ATA gene naturally.

Rodney leaned his head closer, his heart starting to race like he had just discovered an exciting new piece of ancient technology. "How much did you study in college?"

John gave him a wary look. "Never really..."

"And your grades?"

"Okay, I guess." When Rodney gave him a skeptical look, John shifted a little in his seat. "4.3 GPA. A high GPA and physics major looked good for the recruiter. Why are you asking? I got the notification that you hacked into my file the first week. You know where I went to college and what…”

“Yeah, yeah. I remember it all in tedious detail. Your file is filled with the same repetitive bullshit; above-average hand-eye coordination, talented, but impertinent, obsessive. Secretive…”

“Your problem, McKay, is you lay all your cards on the table. People know you’re an asshole and genius in thirty seconds of meeting you.” Now John smirked a little. “I only let people know what I want them to know.”

“And you what, try to distract them with the hair perhaps?”

John ruffled his already disheveled hair. “The Air Force doesn’t like its pilots to think outside the box. It’s not playing dumb or lying, it’s just withholding non-vital information.”

And almost by definition, John was everything was outside the box; from his hair to his mannerisms. The average person didn’t take physics because it was an easy A. It all made sense now and made Rodney look at John in a new light. Sure, the man was attractive; almost too damn good looking, but Rodney had always knew he deserved the best. But now John had this thing, this intuitive gift with complex math that Rodney had a feeling was somehow linked to the ATA gene. It went beyond intelligence. Rodney had watched John reviewing the calculations. It was like he instinctively knew where to look for the flaws.

Rodney licked his lips and leaned so close that his breath tickled John's ear. "When you fly... tell me what it feels like. Tell me what goes through your head when you have to make those split second decisions..."

Because there was a science to flight. Weight. Lift. Drag. Thrust. Forces that all had to be controlled by man to allow flight. And the pilot wasn’t the scientist who designed the flight mechanism, but neither was he a knuckle dragger. And John didn't just fly a UH-60 Blackhawk or even a Puddle Jumper.

John's hand clenched into a fist and then unclenched on the table. "McKay, I just fly. I feel the ship, I just know what to do."

Rodney’s hand settled on John's shoulder, squeezing gently. The idea of John being among the genetic elite, having inherited the ability to mentally interface with Ancient technology from his ancestors, made Rodney jealous on one level, but incredibly attracted to the man on another level. "Uh huh... tell me about your thoughts. What goes through your head when you're in control. Do you think about the science behind each movement?"

"No, " John answered in a thick voice. "It's flying. I just think and it happens. Like... maybe a puzzle. The pieces fall into to place. Sometimes you have to push, turn the pieces. The plane… the Puddle Jumper speaks to me, but not in words."

"Like an instinct."

“Yeah, like an instinct.” Sheppard got a bit of a dreamy look to his face. “First time I flew , it was amazing. Like everything I learned… like all the numbers and theories where real. For me, it was why they existed; simply so I could fly.”

Rodney’s mind was reeling with all the implications and possibilities. His body was reacting in ways John’s reacted to anything that went over 200 miles per hour. Rodney ran his fingers up the nape of John’s neck. “What would you say if I asked you to help me with calculations to help improve the Puddle Jumpers?”

“I’d say I was glad we didn’t call it a Gate Ship like you wanted to.” John tried to hide the minute shiver that he felt from Rodney’s touch. “And I think you’re getting off on this…” He waved his hand absently in the air.

Rodney leaned in close and nipped the back of John’s neck. “That would be an understatement, Sheppard.”

John tilted his head to allow Rodney better access. “You wanna play chess?” That was usually a form of foreplay with Rodney.

“Not now. Maybe later.”

Rodney’s hand reached along, sliding along John’s collar bone and sneaking into the collar of his t-shirt. He kissed up the back of John’s neck until he reached the base of the skull. His lips were tickled by spiky hairs. Under his lips was a mind with a talent that had remained hidden from him. It was an unexplored territory that just happened to come encased in a body he already adored and lusted after. The problem with all of the other relationships Rodney had ever had was that he got bored. But now there was a new intensity to his lover… something beyond his intelligence that was intriguing with its own magnetic pull.

John Sheppard didn’t just think about mathematics; he lived it. The man could feel it.

And Rodney knew that was just enough to push him from companionship and friendly sex to love and obsession. Already Rodney was turning over new scenarios of ways to test John and his abilities. How they could be tested off world. And maybe someday he could give John something he wanted. Maybe Rodney could figure out a way for John to fly Atlantis.

His palm ran down to settle over John’s heart. Rodney kissed the back of John’s head and whispered into John’s hair, “I want you.”

It was like a switch had been flicked on for Rodney. Almost like when John picked up an ancient device and used his ATA gene to push it into activating. As if the love Rodney felt for John had only been dormant all this time.

“Rodney… you’re sounding funny.”

Rodney was already trying to pull John’s shirt off. “Then maybe we should just shut up and fuck.”

John batted away Rodney’s hands and stood up, pushing the chair away. Rodney watched with hungry eyes as John pulled off the shirt and tossed it onto the discarded files. Now he was just standing there in his low slung cargo pants. Rodney’s eyes were slightly dilated and he was breathing harder.

“Seriously, Rodney, you’re kinda freakin’ me out here.”

Rodney pulled his own shirt off and threw it at John. “I can’t believe you’ve been hiding this from me all this time!”

John was used to Rodney’s outbursts and strange lines of thoughts. He wasn’t going to let this particular one stop him from getting off. He wasted no time and started to loosen his laces and toed off his boots. “Hiding what?”

“Your…” Rodney couldn’t quite place the right word to describe John’s talent. He was busy stripping off and trying not to trip over his pants as he watched John strip. “Your mind. It’s brilliant despite being you.”

“I think that’s a compliment.”

“Would you rather I insult you?”

“It would fall within the normal parameters of our relationship.” John smirked at Rodney when the other man glared at him when he used the word parameters. He thought any insult of his own was counterbalanced when he pushed off his underwear to show him exactly how much his body appreciated Rodney.

“Fine. Fine.” Rodney started to rant even as his pushed John towards the bed. “Is it a coincidence that your parents had the same last name before they got married?” John barely had time to snort with amusement before Rodney pushed him hard enough so the man landed sprawled backwards. Rodney continued his barrage of insults as he crawled up John’s body, kissing and touching every inch of skin he could find knowing now John would never bore him. “Have you considered suing your brain for non-support?” John seemed to like that one and laughed, which turned to a quick groan when Rodney licked his cock.

“You’ve been mentally outclassed by a dead invertebrate.” His hands settled on John’s hips to lock him into place as he filled his mouth and had to stop the insults for now. And the moans only increased as Rodney focused in on bringing John pleasure. Being the center of Rodney’s attention was almost disturbing. He cataloged every one of John’s reactions as he had from their first encounter, using them against John as he saw fit. Rodney could draw it out or make it quick and dirty.

John was at his mercy. And now he wasn’t going to let it be easy. He wanted to both torture and reward John. And besides, he was planning on taking John to the lab and would remind him of this pleasure when, and it would be when not if, John complained.

When Rodney pulled away, his lips were moist as he licked them. “Genius does what it must, talent does what it can. Luckily for you, I have both. Now turn over.”

John was frozen, staring a Rodney for a moment. He watched with disbelief that Rodney had pulled away when he was so close. “Wha-”

“Damn, you’re brilliance must be intuitive, because at this exact moment, you are making me see how inefficiently evolution sometimes works.” Rodney’s tone was harsh, but Sheppard could see the teasing affection in Rodney’s expression. Rodney over enunciated the next two words too carefully. “Turn. Over.”

John turned over.

And Rodney showed John yet again that he wasn’t just a genius in the laboratory. He made John scream until his was hoarse. They broke so many regulations that they were lucky to be in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Once Rodney loved, he loved with a single mindedness. It wasn’t strange that it had been a monumental instant when he made the realization. And it wasn’t odd that he realized he loved John Sheppard only when he realized the man had this outstanding ability. It was what it was. Rodney figured the universe owed him and gave him John.

END.


End file.
